Jamaica Kincaid : writing memory, writing back to the mother / J. Brooks Bouson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bouson, J. Brooks.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Kincaid, Jamaica--Criticism and interpretation.

Kincaid, Jamaica.

Memory in literature.

Mothers and daughters in literature.

Women and literature--Antigua and Barbuda--Antigua--History--20th century.

Women and literature.

Antigua--In literature.

Antigua.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (254 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Albany : State University of New York Press, c2005.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Haunted by the memories of her powerfully destructive mother, Jamaica Kincaid is a writer out of necessity. Born Elaine Potter Richardson, Kincaid grew up in the West Indies in the shadow of her deeply contemptuous and abusive mother, Annie Drew. Drawing heavily on Kincaid's many remarks on the autobiographical sources of her writings, J. Brooks Bouson investigates the ongoing construction of Kincaid's autobiographical and political identities. She focuses attention on what many critics find so enigmatic and what lies at the heart of Kincaid's fiction and nonfiction work: the "mother mystery." Bouson demonstrates, through careful readings, how Kincaid uses her writing to transform her feelings of shame into pride as she wins the praise of an admiring critical establishment and an ever-growing reading public.

Contents:

When you think of me, think of my life

I had embarked on something called self-invention : artistic beginnings in "Antigua crossings" and At the bottom of the river

The way I became a writer was that my mother wrote my life for me and told it to me : living in the shadow of the mother in Annie John

As I looked at this sentence a great wave of shame came over me and I wept and wept : the art of memory, anger, and despair in Lucy

Imagine the bitterness and the shame in me as I tell you this : the political is personal in A small place and "On seeing England for the first time"

I would bear children but I would never be a mother to them : writing back to the contemptuous mother in The autobiography of my mother

I shall never forget him because his life is the one I did not have : remembering her brother's failed life in My brother

Like him and his own father before him, I have a line drawn through me : imagining the life of the absent father in Mr. Potter.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. 221-231) and index.

ISBN:

9780791482926

0791482928

9781423747741

1423747747

OCLC:

76786815